District Court Holds that Internet-Based Television Provider, FilmOn X is Entitled to a Compulsory License

By Anne Woodworth – Edited by Henry Thomas

The U.S. District court for the Central District of California ruled that an online streaming service that rebroadcasted network television fit the definition of a cable company, and was entitled to compulsory licensing under § 111 of the Copyright Act. The order relied on the Supreme Court’s Aereo decision, which held that internet streaming was fundamentally the same as cable. The ruling conflicts with a Second Circuit case decided on similar facts, and is immediately appealable.

Last Monday, the Seventh Circuit Courto of Appeals ruled that victims of a data breach had standing to pursue a class action even when they had not suffered direct financial harm as a result of the breach or when they had already been compensated for financial harm resulting from the breach. The opinion reversed a contrary district court decision, which the Seventh Circuit said had incorrectly read the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Clapper v. Amnesty International USA.

How Far Can Law Enforcement Go When Gathering Email Evidence? Former Gov. Scott Walker Employee Files Petition for Writ of Certiorari

By Kasey Wang – Edited by Ariane Moss

Kelly Rindfleisch is serving a six-month sentence for misconduct in public office while working for then-County Executive Scott Walker. Rindfleisch appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming that the government violated her Fourth Amendment rights while searching her emails for evidence for a different case.

Russia’s “Right To Be Forgotten” and China’s Right To Be Protected: New Privacy and Security Legislation

By Brittany Doyle – Edited by Ken Winterbottom

The legislatures in Russia and China took steps this month to tighten regulations over Internet companies with access to user data. In Russia, President Vladmir Putin signed a law ensuring a “right to be forgotten” reminiscent of the European Court of Justice’s right to be forgotten ruling of May 2014. And in China, the National People’s Congress released a draft cybersecurity bill that would formalize and strengthen the State’s long-standing regulation of websites and network operators.

The Washington Court of Appeals held that—absent evidence of defamation—a third party website is not required to unmask an anonymous defendant. The court adopted an analysis similar to the widely cited Dendrite test for the showing a defamation plaintiff must make on a motion to compel disclosure of an anonymous defendant’s identity.

On July 20, MediaPost News reported that the law firm KamberEdelson is readying a class action lawsuit on behalf of consumers against Amazon for removing George Orwell books on owners’ Kindles. Amazon remotely deleted the e-books from users after discovering that the company that added them to the online catalog did not have rights to the books. Amazon did issue refunds to the owners, but representatives of KamberEdelson argue that the action infringes on consumer’s property rights and violates Amazon’s user agreement. On Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow discusses the problems that remote deletion poses to Digital Rights Media as a whole.

British Judge Rules that Google is Not Liable for Defamatory Search Results

On July 20, the New York Times reported that a High Court judge in Britain ruled that Google cannot be held liable for defamatory material appearing in its search results. The case arose when Metropolitan International Schools, which runs Internet-based training courses, sued Google over negative comments posted on a third party web site that appeared as text blurbs in Google search results. The judge held that Google “has merely, by the provision of its search service, played the role of a facilitator.” While this decision is consistent with America and other European countries’ libel laws, this case is seen as a significant win for search engines because of England’s reputation as being sympathetic to libel claimants.

USPTO Places Its “Peer-to-Patent” Pilot Program on Hold

In 2007, the United States Patent and Trade Office partnered with New York Law School’s Center for Patent Innovation to create an online collaborative patent review program. After two years, the program has been suspended in order to evaluate its effectiveness, InformationWeek reports. The Center for Patent Innovation also cited the poor economy as a reason for the suspension. Hoping to decrease the backlog in the USPTO, the pilot program encouraged patent applicants to volunteer their submissions to undergo peer review. Peer-to-Patent issued its second anniversary report this July and announced it will stop accepting new applicants. Despite the hiatus, there is hope that the program will be re-launched in the future as David Kappos, Obama’s nominee for director of USPTO, has indicated his support of the program, calling it “the Patent Office of the 21st century.”

In a federal court complaint filed in the Northern District of California on July 7th, sports discussion board and social networking site RootZoo alleged that Facebook charged them for advertising referrals that never occurred and that Facebook failed to “properly guard” against click fraud, the practice of third-party individuals or computer programs repeatedly clicking on the advertisement to inflate the number of referrals.

RootZoo’s complaint accuses Facebook of both breach of the “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing” in their advertising contract and unfair business practices.RootZoo was one of many advertisers who paid Facebook for each click referring a Facebook user to their site.RootZoo claims that Facebook consistently charged them for more outgoing referrals than the RootZoo servers logged as incoming during the period they advertised on Facebook.According to the complaint, when RootZoo submitted server log documentation to Facebook and asked to be refunded for the discrepancy, Facebook refused to provide any refund and would not release any documentation to back up their refusal.The complaint contrasted Facebook’s unwillingness to release data with the more transparent practices of Yahoo! and Google.RootZoo’s filing came only weeks after TechCrunch wrote a series of well-publicized articles on Facebook click fraud prompted by outraged advertiser posts on the marketing discussion board WickedFire.Following the TechCrunch articles, Facebook representatives claimed to have “developed a series of sophisticated systems” to detect click fraud and to have refunded any advertisers that were affected.However, RootZoo is seeking class action status and an unspecified amount of damages..

MediaPost and The Register offer overviews of the filing and a response from Facebook, while TechCrunch summarizes some of the preceding controversy and WickedFire discussion board postings.

On July 10, 2009 in a per curium decision, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit affirmed the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (“Board”) decision invalidating the patent claims for a yellow bean of Mexican origin.The court held that the applicant failed to rebut the examiner’s prima facie determination that all of the claims were obvious.

Cyberattack on U.S. and South Korean Governments Stymies Investigators

Law enforcement officials are still investigating the cyberattacks that hobbled some U.S. and South Korean government websites for five days beginning July 4, the New York Times reports. The distributed denial of service attack caused 50,000 to 65,000 infected computers to jam websites of government agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Secret Service with an extraordinary amount of traffic. Although independent and government investigations have led to computers in Miami, Florida, and the U.K., some experts think finding the ultimate source of the “amateurish” attack may prove to be impossible.

MediaPost News reports that in a recent class action case against Microsoft, a federal district court in Seattle held that IP addresses do not count as “personally identifiable information” (PII), a term regularly used in user agreements and online privacy policies. The June 23 opinion granted Microsoft’s motion for summary judgment on charges that it had violated its user agreement by collecting IP addresses during automatic software updates. Judge Richard Jones held that in order to be PII, a piece of data must directly identify “a person,” rather than “a computer,” as an IP address does. The decision is in tension with recent E.U. regulatory findings and a 2008 opinion from the New Jersey Supreme Court, according to MediaPost.

New Zealand Takes Second Swing at “Three Strikes”

On July 14, New Zealand’s Ministry of Economic Development introduced a revised version of its “three strikes” copyright provision aimed at curbing online infringement, Ars Technica and Billboard report. The original bill, which provided for the termination of internet service provider subscribers’ accounts as a penalty for repeat copyright infringement, was scrapped in March after public outcry and industry disagreement. The new version addresses due process concerns by allowing alleged infringers to respond to notices of infringement and to have their cases mediated before trial. Termination of infringers’ internet accounts remains a possible penalty under the revised law.

The Monmouth County Superior Court of New Jersey held that the Defendant, blogger Shellee Hale, was not entitled to the protections of a newsperson under New Jersey’s Shield Law. Although Hale claimed that her posts on an Internet message board were intended to inform the public and spur debate on Too Much Media’s alleged activities, Judge Locascio focused on Hale’s credibility and whether her posting resembled traditional news media. The court noted that although the Shield Law in New Jersey was “one of the nation’s broadest,” Hale “presented no credible evidence . . . that she ever worked for any ‘newspapers, magazines, press associations, news agencies or wire services, radio or television.’” In reaching this conclusion, Judge Locascio gave no weight to Hale’s being a blogger or her claims of having published articles in a newspaper and trade journal because she failed to name the publications and lied in her certification to the court, which Judge Locasio labeled a “sham affidavit.”